Ciro Alegria while waiting to be shot
Ciro Alegria
The most important American Indian novel - "The world is wide and others' (1941) was written by a Peruvian Ciro Alegría, who years earlier had survived a massacre, had dodged a firing squad, had spent several years in prison, had been banished after and most of his life could not return home because a succession of dictatorships always stopped him.
On Christmas Eve 1931, Ciro Alegría, then a boy of 22, was the local APRA in its home city, Trujillo, to assist in the delivery of food for poor children. He was accompanied by his friend, the painter Mariano Alcántara was more or less the same age.
APRA was a political and social movement that was rising up a few years ago to make major structural changes and to propose the union of the Latin American countries against United States imperialism. In agriculture, Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, their leader, proposed the expropriation of large estates, a feudal relic in which the landowner was master of the lives and destinies of his Indians.
A few hours after the distribution of bonuses, Ciro and drinking with fellow Mariano traditional hot chocolate that night. The young writer's eyes caught the attention of a beautiful classmate and invited her out for walks in the adjoining Plaza de Armas in Trujillo, Peru's largest. That would save his life.
When there were a few minutes before midnight, a truck with soldiers parked in front of the local party. Newcomers carrying machine guns. Some were stationed outside the door. A group of them entered the room making shots left and right. There were dozens of deaths. Most of those were, indeed, children and housewives.
For its part, Mariano Alcántara, tired of waiting for his friend, had gone to sleep under the desk in the administrative office. When soldiers entered shooting, believed that one of his rounds had settled. It was he who many years later, Trujillo I tell our history.
In July the following year in the same city explode a revolution that was destined to be the starting point of a formidable social insurgency in Peru. It is normal for young university Ciro Alegria take part. The rebels seized the city jail for a week and installed a popular government. However, the armed forces besieged Trujillo by air, sea and land and, after many unequal battle, crushed the rebellion. Thousands of Trujillo were shot summarily against the walls of the ancient pre-Hispanic city of Chan Chan.
Cyrus may be one of them, but death was not yet on their lists. After riding kills pursued in balance, was finally caught. A court martial decided his execution. In prison, he waited for months to comply with the fateful decision.
When I met him several decades later, Joy told me that there, in dreams and in the midst of the four prison walls, he had seen Rosendo and the various characters of his epic novel "The world is wide and strange." "I was dying to get out to write" I said .-.
The work, published nine years later, the Indians of an Andean community have to face the invasion of their land by the landowner who protect the armed forces and the laws of the republic. Only nature mysticism and gives them a tremendous resistance to ancestral Indian community will continue its struggle. International award-winning and published in 1941, this novel would also be the first entry of the figure of the Indian in Peruvian literature. Before she was published, the Indians had not been considered worthy to enter the pages still colonial Peruvian authors.
A Ciro was commuted the death penalty by a prison he suffered some years and then exile in Chile. In this country would be published "The Golden Serpent" (1935) and "hungry dogs" (1939). "The world is wide and others," published in almost all languages, was to become a global novel.
Not even the fame won by these events could serve to return to their country. Successive dictatorships was prevented or made Peru a very dangerous place for the novelist who finally went to the United States and was dedicated there to the university chair.
After a long exile and after a few decades back. Fulminant heart attack ended his life in 1967. They had not done away with the gun of the irrational, not the eventful years of persecution and martyrdom, or the possibility of being shot. Neither would get the death because their readers these days we are celebrating the centenary of his birth and eternity of the characters or the book he revealed that he thought as he waited to be shot.
Tags: APRA , Chile , Ciro Alegría , APRA , Peru , Trujillo
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November 3, 2009 9:13 pm
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By JULIO ATENCIO , November 8, 2009 @ 6:56 a.m.
Years of idealism and commitment, the revolution of consciousness. There are some reports, it would be good to verify that not only the dictatorship persigio to Joy, but it also covertly APRA
By Deborah , November 11, 2009 @ 6:51 pm
Fantastic author, the best Peruvian author. Thanks for the note.
By alberto moya obese , December 24, 2009 @ 9:59 a.m.
Eduardo:
What has been said by Julio Atencio me to not ignore his words and say it is true that the persecuted APRA Ciro Alegria, que3 only she had another turn. When Ciro Alegria military decided Popular Action, qu a reformist party came to the left of APRA, which had abandoned the ideals for which killed thousands of men of the people in Trujillo and other parts of the country, the novelist was invited to give a conference in the auditorium of the Universidad Nacional de Trujillo. And surprise, the university APRA then organized a counter-demonstration against Cyrus. And some of its intellectuals dared to say, words, words less, the great novels referred to Eduardo Gonzalez Viana were written by his wife and not him. It was at the time that Edward and Walter Palacios studying at the university, to which I also belonged as a student. I think the time has come to say as they have been and are the things in my country, Peru.
Alberto Moya Obeso. Professor at the Universidad Nacional de Trujillo, Peru.